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From short-term technical assistance to long-term program implementation support and more, AIDSTAR-One provides rapid, evidence-based services to PEPFAR country teams in generalized, mixed and concentrated HIV epidemic settings.

Strengthening Communities’ Responses to HIV/AIDS, Ethiopia

The Strengthening Communities’ Responses to HIV/AIDS Project brings services to urban and peri-urban areas and towns where the majority of Ethiopians live. At the heart of this three-year project are strategies to improve the ability of Ethiopian communities to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Coordinating its work with regional and federal offices of the Ministry of Health and the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Agency, the project makes grants to civil society organizations (CSOs) across the country. The aim is to strengthen the organizational development and human capacity of CSOs so they are better able to reach people with high-quality interventions that reduce the impact of HIV.

The project also addresses an underlying killer: poverty. Economic strengthening activities are integrated with health interventions so that people affected by HIV will gain business and financial skills, increase their assets, and improve their ability to provide for their families.

Geographic areas and services: The project will support the delivery of services by CSOs in urban and peri-urban areas where antiretroviral therapy services are available. The project will reach 300 towns with work in five component areas:

Community-based care and support services (palliative care). CSOs will provide families with services, including clinical and nonclinical palliative care, counseling, adherence support, health and nutrition information, educational support for orphans and vulnerable children, and linkages to other services.

HIV counseling and testing services. Community-based organizations will partner with government health workers to provide home-based HIV and TB counseling and testing services.

Economic strengthening services. These include skill building to assess economic vulnerabilities and opportunities, designing and adapting models for agricultural development, and accessing microfinance and microenterprise opportunities.

Capacity building for community-based HIV/AIDS services. The project will help CSOs strengthen technical and organizational capacities.

Human capacity development for HIV/AIDS community services. Selected educational institutions will receive technical and material assistance to develop and strengthen social work curricula. A fellowship program will be established to deploy graduates to CSOs.

Community-level monitoring and evaluation: The project will contribute to national and regional technical working groups to deliver verifiable improvements in the community component of the national monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. We are working with CSOs to align reporting content and formats with the national system and streamline their systems.

We are introducing three new tools to fill community-level M&E gaps:

A method to measure and compare the quality of the home-based services delivered by community volunteers and health extension workers.

An integrated data quality assurance protocol and on-the-job training curriculum that will improve data reliability and validity and increase CSO capacity to interpret and use data.

An adaptation of the “most significant change” methodology to qualitatively identify the impact of the project on the health and well-being of families and communities.

Partners

PATH’s international partners are the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, International Relief & Development, International Training & Education Center for Health, and Westat.

This website is implemented by John Snow, Inc. This Project is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development under contract number GHH-I-00-07-00059-00 Task Order No. 01 and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The information provided on this web site is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government.